少年、なにかが発芽する 「Shounen, nani ka ga hatsugasuru 」
Release Date: 2022
Duration: 26 mins.
Director: Yuko Watanabe
Writer: FURUKOTO, Hiroki Tawada (Screenplay),
Starring: Seitaro Hara, Kanako Higashi, Kenji Iwaya,
We have all been there. That refusal to eat a certain food as a child. For some of us, it may even include trying to get a child to eat something. Usually it is healthy food – who really likes the taste of cauliflower??? While experiences may differ, it is very rarely the ordeal that Yuko Watanabe, as director and editor, portrays it as in her funny and visually arresting short film Boy, Sprouted.
Our players are a boy (Seitaro Hara) who dislikes tomatoes and his mother (Kanako Higashi) who wants him to get over his aversion to them. Working off a script created by an AI named “FURUKOTO,” Yuko Watanabe makes the relatively harmless everyday occurrence of fussy eating into a psychological horror film by the way she simply holds attention and wraps various filmic elements around mundane things, thus turning them into the mysterious and menacing.
Where our gaze is directed to and for how long, is key here. Looking at something makes it important, looking at something for too long creates a fixation that can turn either positive or negative and when there is too much of something, it can feel overwhelming. When it comes to tomatoes in this film, it really is too much.
For a start, there is the sheer abundance of tomatoes which is quite off-putting as the boy is constantly offered them and they are seen in many scenes despite this being in the school and the home. They are usually being handled by characters and the repetition of the mother and other kids eating them gives one a feeling that they have an obsession or are part of a cult of tomato worshippers.
With Watanabe giving plenty of close-ups and long takes of various variations of the fruit, you will get more than familiar with their many textures and shapes – especially the icky purée that gets made! That their blood-red colour pops off the screen makes the tomatoes stand out really effectively at moments such as when tomato juice is spilled by the boy, the symbolism being quite heavy. There is even a tomato-eyed perspective shot at one point as a tray full of them is carried into the little boy’s classroom. Beyond this is the use of red-coloured lighting and costumes/props to make things sinister and then the heightened sound of the mother mulching tomatoes which is thrown into the mix (with an extreme close-up of her tomato-smeared lips) to really make one feel queasy.
Queasier still are the shoots of body horror that emerge as the boy seems to be turning into a tomato in what reminded me of the Stephen King section of the 1982 horror anthology Creepshow. Up until this point, the story has some ambiguity to it when it comes to deciding where the boy’s aversion comes from but it gets really stomach-churning here. Rest assured, the ending isn’t as bleak as that aforementioned horror classic. What Watanabe has crafted is a horror take on a normal story to make the contrast in tones funny and it has a happy finale.
By using visual and aural techniques, the repetition of everything tomato, and acting along with pulsing electronic music that bubbles away, growing in intensity during scenes of tomato-based intimidation, what we are getting is a strong horror atmosphere but these are techniques to suggest the fixation that the boy has on the fruit. Watanabe’s vision of where to take the story is so powerful that this fixation takes hold on the viewer and it creates odd counterpoint and so the laughter comes in the dissonance found between story and tone that creates some bathos which allows us to laugh heartily at the end, an effect coupled with the sense of relief as the son overcomes his aversion and we can enjoy the silliness. Easy to get into and fun to experience, you definitely get the sense that kids and parents can watch it together and would be able to appreciate it from the different perspectives of the characters.
This was one of the best-directed films at the festival as Watanabe’s control of the material and her style made such a huge impact and subverted a standard story to make it something new. It definitely shows she has talent and that she should be given a feature film to work with.
Boy, Sprouted was one of the Housen Cultural Foundation films screened for free at the Osaka Asian Film Festival 2022.